Mike Oldfield

Tubular Bells and after

Michael Gordon Oldfield was born on May 15, 1953 in Reading, Berkshire. He began in the folk duo the Sallyangie with his sister Sally Oldfield, whose album Children of the Sun came out in 1969 on Transatlantic, and in 1970 joined Kevin Ayers's backing band the Whole World. Tubular Bells, recorded at The Manor Studio, was released on May 25, 1973 as the first release on Virgin Records, and about 2.76 million copies sold in the UK. Hergest Ridge (1974), Ommadawn (1975) and Incantations (1978) kept to long instrumental forms. A 1975 Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition went to Tubular Bells, which entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, and its opening was used in The Exorcist.

From 1979 his Virgin albums turned to songs: Platinum, QE2, Five Miles Out and Crises (1983), which contains "Moonlight Shadow" with Maggie Reilly, a number 4 hit in the UK. After the 1983 tour he moved to Villars-sur-Ollon in Switzerland, where he made Discovery and the score for The Killing Fields (1984), which earned a BAFTA nomination. Islands, Earth Moving, Amarok and Heaven's Open followed on Virgin, then Warner Bros. from 1992 with Tubular Bells II, The Songs of Distant Earth, Voyager, Tubular Bells III, Guitars, The Millennium Bell and Tres Lunas. After 2004 came Light and Shade, Music of the Spheres, Man on the Rocks (2014) and Return to Ommadawn (2017, number 4 in the UK). He played at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics on July 27, 2012, and Tubular Bells 50th anniversary edition appeared in 2023, when his label said the demo with it might be the last piece he records. Setlist.fm counts about 431 setlists from 1973 to 2012. Books about him include Chris Dewey's A Life Dedicated to Music (2013).